Do Something to Make the World More Beautiful

These might seem like two unrelated items, but they are not. First, several years ago I got it into my head that I wanted to work internationally but hadn’t found the right opportunity to make it happen. And, second I don’t often get to design urban gardens in my landscape design practice. When the chance came my way to do both I jumped in!

British interior designer, Heather Jenkinson, who is also a friend, asked me to design the two small gardens at either end of her new apartment near Dartmouth Park in London.

We will be working together remotely (more on the tools and trials of that in a here and in future posts) until the actual installation to bring her relaxed, contemporary style (above) outside in a way that will extend the apartment’s overall look to her front and back gardens. In May, I’ll visit to make sure everything is going smoothly and to troubleshoot anything that isn’t.

The mostly north-south facing walled courtyards face the street on two sides as the corner apartment spans a single block. Solutions for both privacy and security are paramount in the design process. Heather’s two small dogs will have access to both gardens. My first challenge has been to visualize using metric measurements! Millimeters and centimeters to inches and feet. Mind blown. What exactly does 4′ mean in metric? 1219.2 mm! The converter on my phone and in my CAD software have become close, overworked companions. We have also started using an iPhone map called appropriately Photo Measures that allows you to put a question mark or a measurement easily on an image and email or export it to another platform. I always miss something when I measure a site and there is no option here to just ‘run over there’ to get what I need.

Small spaces have to make every inch (centimeter?!) count and are in many ways more challenging than a large expansive landscape because of that. The front garden is 13.5′ long by 8′ wide and has two street facing walls that are approximately 3′ tall. There is a sliding door from the living room with a step down to the garden floor that is centered on the long side facing the street. A combination of a partial (and silly) wood fence and brick wall on remaining short boundary that separates it from the neighboring garden. Currently an overgrown, shaggy evergreen tree dominates the east wall. I’m not one to remove trees, but this one has to go to make the garden even minutely useful!

The front is adjacent the living room and will be transformed into an extension of that public area for extra seating and extending entertaining in the warmer months. In my preliminary plan I have included horizontal slat fence extensions for the brick walls, espaliered hornbeams to define a vertical green layer that will help create even more privacy from passersby but won’t take up too much room, and a small water feature to help mask street noise and that will create a focal point from the long view through the apartment to the garden. There will be a mirrored window on the west side fenced wall that will serve to make the garden look bigger, create a garden view from the living room sectional and also to reflect some sunlight. The unusable portion of the step from the slider will be removed to create an intimate seating area with a small love seat and occasional table opposite the mirrored wall. The ground surface will be gravel that is easy on dog’s feet and even easier to clean up!

The second garden is directly off the bedroom and will become a private, meditative haven for a busy designer. I haven’t started the conceptual for that although I can clearly see a soothing lounge space in my mind’s eye so watch here (on a totally random schedule) or subscribe via the email link in the sidebar to see the complete makeover as it progresses over the next several months.

I have been thinking a lot about planting plans since I’ve been working on the Colonial Park Perennial Garden project. There are so many choices and points of view and it has forced me to really consider my own. I have always relied on my visual instincts when it comes to design–even with plants. That may seem out of fashion, but I also consider the lessons of the land I’m working with and what a particular site can teach me. I will never be done growing and evolving as a designer–just like the gardens I design.

For me, planting plans are about a hard to define quality that combines hints from the site, foliage, sun and shade, long lasting interest, bloom sequence, color, mood, habitat, the environment, deer and rabbits, the seasons, movement, availability, and on and on and on and not necessarily in that order all of the time. All of these are layered in my mind as I work through to a solution. I prefer to use fewer plants that are repeated in different combinations and proportions, rather than more used sporadically. The repeated elements are generally texture and color although with fewer plants, the interest happens with the proportions of each in relationship to each other and the whole. My mind is never at rest when I’m working on a planting plan. Each individual combination of plants has to layer all of the elements listed with its immediate neighbors and also convey some kind of lasting visual/visceral quality that is difficult for me to pin down. I admire the work of other designers, but what they can do is not what I can do. Planting design is intensely individual and no two designers have the same viewpoint just as no two pieces of art are the same. There can be copies and forgeries, but the real thing has the unique qualities of the designer’s hand stamped on it.

Although I would never use barberry in a plan because it is highly invasive where I live and work, this combination of an unidentified golden pygmy barberry (possibly Berberis thunbergii ‘Aurea Nana’) threaded with Drumstick Alliums (Allium sphaerocephalon) in John Gwynne and Mikel Folcarelli’s Sakonnet Garden stopped me, made me smile and consider it in a garden full of such moments. Here’s another–Nicotiana langsdorfii and Asclepias spp. These are two plants that I would not have thought to combine yet I loved them together when I saw them.

Another planting that just made me think and has the emotive quality I often find elusive is by Deborah Silver in Michigan and is closer to what I like to do but also very different. The soft greys and purples in front of hard edged boxwood add a luminous, feminine quality to the crisp, geometric hedge. The three different foliage sizes and textures repeated throughout are highly edited yet don’t feel meager. They feel full and soft and ample. The soft grey combined with the deep violet picks up on the slate roof and is masterful in its proportions.

Although these combinations by others are beautiful in their own right and tick off some of the items in my never ending round Robin of a list, my combinations are different. I like restful, blowzy plantings with things spilling out over an underlying structure that somewhat like an overstuffed piece of furniture if that makes any sense. I want my gardens to make you exhale and everything that troubles you from that day or moment just falls away. I want the mess to be okay too which makes my viewpoint the antithesis of many formal and Japanese Zen gardens although I have employed elements of both.

In the end, my practice is to just start with the structure and then build softness and serenity with punctuation points around that. It evolves though, and often the first plant grouping laid down doesn’t make the final edit. Everything moves and shifts and changes as I make studies month by month to insure that there is equal time given to the seasons. Winter is included in that with both evergreen and the wonderful ‘mess’ left standing. The solution for both small and large gardens always reveals itself to me through the thought and the physical process of making the drawing which in turn is always driven by the site. No two are ever alike. Going back to where I started on this ramble. I’m not sleeping well, my mind is active and the park planting plan is almost done. I am editing as I go along. Then I will worry it some more and edit it again until I believe it’s well and truely finished–hopefully by my self imposed deadline in two weeks.

Every now and then I take a project that isn’t private and residential. Enter the Perennial Garden at Colonial Park in Somerset County. Currently it is a large circular garden with an entry aisle of double borders and a central gazebo. Plants that have been able to survive and thrive in less than ideal conditions dominate. Those conditions include the lack of an overall current garden plan, rampant deer, and a predominance of aggressive, deer resistant self seeders/spreaders. There is a gardener dedicated to the space. There are too many of too few plants to make the garden sing.

My approach to this project has been very different from what I normally do which is what attracted me to it. I have spent the past four months visiting, observing, cataloging existing plants (some to reuse, others not), and imagining what I would want from a garden like this if I was a casual visitor. There are few ‘sacred cows’ except the central gazebo which is, in my mind, an okay place to start. A central ADA compliant path will be added to it from the parking lot. A request was made by the head horticulturalist of the park to focus on native plants and their cultivars. As far as I can make that work, it’s what I do normally anyway. First look to the natives and then if they don’t or can’t fulfill the design goals, look elsewhere.

As it is, the current configuration doesn’t invite any kind of interaction except from the resident groundhog and deer. Brides use it as a background for their pictures yet there is little in bloom in June.

I believe that gardens should be experiential. Being able to walk and rest inside, to see plants up close adds to the experience of a garden. This one only allows looking at it from the sidelines. That became my first goal of the redesign. I want to honor the circular history of the garden but not be strictly bound by it, I want ample space for plants while lowering the maintenance, and I want the garden to be a place for all except the groundhog and deer!

I experimented with several layouts, playing with paths and circular sections that would still allow the gazebo to be the central feature. Using a spiral based on the nautilus created by a Fibonacci sequence was one of those layouts. It clicked for me. We have a meeting to discuss it and a few other issues next week. Meanwhile, the concept is below and I will work on plant lists.

I recently visited a group of gardens in and around Boston with the Association of Professional Landscape Designers. It’s always a hyper stimulating time for me with a combination of input that merges other designers’ insights and opinions, seminars presenting both science and design, and visits to the locale’s interesting gardens and landscapes. After several days of this past conference I found myself longing for the big idea. I found it on the last day in a garden created by two octogenarians in Rhode Island over the past 50 years.

Berta and Nate Atwater have made a landscape that is sublime in its simplicity. Boundary walls of native stone and sweeps of short mowed paths are punctuated with trained and pruned plants. The wild and the cultivated exist side by side and as complements to each other. The big idea for me was the low mowed paths. These areas of nothing much that allow the eye and mind to rest or wander are what many gardeners would consider unused space to be filled were restful and contemplative. It takes a confidence to allow void to be the thing. A mowed path through tall meadows and grasses is nothing new and common in large country gardens. This was different in its short and shorter stature and allowed the views and verticals to sit equally.

When I first started blogging on a different platform in 2007, my subject was my designer show house garden in Rumson. Hardly anyone saw those posts or again in 2009. Now all these years and many designer show houses later I’ve decided to blog about the same thing. This time, it’s for the Mansion in May. So let’s begin.

First a large old house is sought by the event organizers. Once found, every other year architects, interior and landscape designers are invited to submit ideas for a space that will be on public display for the month of May. Each must submit a proposal for up to three spaces to a selection committee–so being invited isn’t the end process. The 2017 house is Neo-Gothic Alnwick Hall, one of the surviving homes on Millionaire’s Row between Madison and Morristown, New Jersey.

Photograph by Wing Wong/Memories TTL

I was only interested in one of the 17 landscape spaces offered. A small enclosed courtyard at the rear of the building. Apologies for the slightly out of focus before picture I took with my phone…

Below is my proposal which was accepted by the committee. The next time I post, will be about the coordinating of this garden with the various artists and personalities involved as well as the details of building it. Special consideration has to be given to these types of gardens since they will get more foot traffic in one month than most get in a lifetime–more than 20,000 people!

I promised I would be back here when I thought I had something new or interesting to say. There is no eye candy today–just words and thoughts. I also don’t feel the need to push my ideas on anyone else–so you don’t have to agree or disagree with what follows.

I have never been one to blindly follow a trend or an idea. My thoughts, like most people’s, spring from my own experience and individual point of view. When I was working in the fashion industry, I was always interested in designers who were doing things differently from the rest. I admired those who translated a burst of thought into ideas that were at first strange and wonderful but would ultimately be borrowed, watered down or interpreted by others. I was also interested in those who looked back and used history as a starting point celebrating the traditional and making it contemporary. For me, there is a healthy dichotomy of design thought there with equal emphasis on the new and the old.

In my mind, gardens or landscapes are defined as spaces that are outside of nature. They cannot be truly of nature since they are conceived and made by people. These human endeavors at garden making do not include restoration of native environments or habitat although they can incorporate those elements. They can try to mimic nature, but a garden is ultimately a space made by people for human activity, introspection, observation and the appreciation of beauty within the context of what is right for its particular environment and time. The human element of a garden is important. It is also where the outlier part comes in.

The gardens being made by the New Perennialist movement that started almost thirty years ago in Germany and have been perfected by Piet Oudolf and others are in my mind are largely to look at. I have visited some of the best of them and it’s the auxiliary spaces that invite human interaction, not the plantings. The gardens themselves may have a path or two through them, they may be large or small, but they are like paintings hung on a wall. They do not invite human participation. They are broad strokes of planting design artistry that invite visual reaction, not physical interaction.

There is great value in this idea when a site’s topography or limitations don’t allow for safe passage or it is a space that will act as a visual foil something else. This concept is what makes the High Line so successful and in my mind is also its downfall. The plantings are something that are passed through while doing something else. They can be admired, but in all but a few places they cannot be entered. They are beautiful, bold, border designs. The border as a garden design concept has been around almost as long as people have been making gardens. They exist on the sidelines. True, those sidelines can be breathtaking and can be beneficial to wildlife and the planet at large, but I am talking about garden making and that, as I said before, is a human undertaking that invites interaction.

Conversely there are historic gardens (remember that dichotomy?) that make plants such background players that they become almost irrelevant. They are decoration, they could be fake. These ‘gardens’ were designed primarily for people with little regard for the natural world other than how the designer could manipulate it into abstraction. Those gardens lose the sensory, introspective and observational aspects of plantings in a garden, leaving room only for human activity.

I believe there is room in contemporary garden and landscape design to celebrate human activity combined with interactive planting design as equal partners. I also believe that the gardens and landscapes that do that will be long term successes. There is room for structure, hard surfaces and places for people as well as plants and habitat to co-exist and intermingle. They are not static or fixed in the moment past or present. We have changed our planet too much to be able to go back to nature as it was and gardens can help define how humans appreciate and savor the outdoors. What we really need to be thinking about is what is right for a specific piece of land in a specific region that will be used regularly by a group of individuals in a meaningful and participatory way. We need to consider how we entice people outside into the garden to observe, delight, create, to spend time and do things and think about their place in the world instead of just moving through it or looking at it or worse ignoring it and paying attention to hand held technology instead?

As a landscape designer I have questions that roll around in my brain to be solved by working through my design process. How do the successful attributes of traditional gardens and the best ideals of the new perennialists combine to create something new–something that balances the being and the seeing? How do I foster understanding and appreciation of our not so natural world, the one we now live in, through the design of spaces that allow people to interact with all of its pieces? Making planting design precious unto itself relegates it to the same place as a great work of art in a museum. It’s not that, it’s a living changeable thing. What is the most valuable human experience in any garden–is it different for every individual? I try to strike a broad balance between the traditional and the contemporary–sometimes there are no perennials or grasses at all in my gardens. If that makes me an outlier, I’m okay with that.

Edit: I sat on this post for a month or so until a group who I had a conversation with about this feeling of being an outlier and who I would consider to be New Perennialists encouraged me to publish it. –Susan

Not to belabor the point but sometimes the stars align. I’m working on an expansive landscape master plan and just presented the concept to my clients. In that plan is a pool with twin covered structures at one end of the enclosure. One will house an open air yet covered outdoor kitchen and the other will be a small poolhouse with a bathroom, shower and dressing room.

I would have never thought to suggest this as part of my purvue prior to attending KBIS. I have my interior design sisterhood to collaborate with on the details and some beautiful features to include that I would never have known about had I not gone to Las Vegas. On the kitchen side, there were some beautiful options as well.

So let’s talk toilets. Wouldn’t it be nice to come in from a swim and sit on a heated seat? And wouldn’t it be nice not to have to worry about constantly cleaning it? The small space allotted for the WC in the poolhouse will also benefit from a wall hung unit. As a guest of TOTO, I learned that all of this is possible. I won’t be doing the technical design in the space, but I will be asking that their products be specified. Why? Because they are super high qualtity, elegant, and innovative. That’s a no brainer.

None of us work in a void. Sometimes when wrapped up in client projects and deadlines, those of us who have boutique design firms can feel like a vacuum is sucking us in and all that surrounds us is ourselves, our clients, and our own work. For a landscape designer in a four season environment, January is especially devoid of just about everything so when I was invited by Modenus-The Design Directory to join a group of interior designers in Las Vegas to speak about luxury outdoor kitchens I said yes. What happened next was so unexpected. What follows will be a wee bit off topic.

Those of you who know me personally usually see the gregarious and social me. I am what is called a social introvert. I need and spend lots of time alone, but when in social situations I am connected and present–even though that’s not my natural state. The prospect of meeting 24 women who were absolute strangers was daunting. Enter the sisterhood.

Rather than my usual ‘Hi I’m Susan’ with extended hand routine I started off as of an observer. I wasn’t sure if I would be the proverbial square peg in a round hole–I’m a landscape designer not an interior designer. I wasn’t. These women–all interior designers, design bloggers and project managers- not only welcomed me but were just as curious about why I was there and what I did as I was about them. For three days we shared incredible opportunities and experiences from a private tour of the Wynn resorts with its general manager to a beautiful luncheon with incredible food and wine sponsored by Thermador at the uber midmod Las Vegas Country Club to a fun and lively dinner hosted by Toto. We went by bus to see the new seamless indoor/outdoor Responsive Homes designed by Bobby Berk for Pardee Homes, who, afterwards, huddled with us under a patio heater in the chilly Nevada night. We visited the upscale, sustainable 2016 New American Home, built to showcase green technologies, techniques and products. In between all of that we attended KBIS2016 to see the best in Kitchen and Bath Products. I found plenty to like for outdoor living.

Throughout the three days these designing women questioned, shared, learned about their design discipline and about each other. There was no bitchiness or jealousy or drama. Everyone showed up ready to be and give their best. They were authentic and enthusiastic and supportive of each other in every way. They will forever be my hashtag sisterhood. #designhounds #blogtourKBIS #KBIS2016 #KBISoutdoorliving

It’s a newish year and of course I’ve already deviated from my not so best laid plans. On Sunday though, something I’ve been working towards for several years will happen. I will be travelling to Las Vegas with a group of interior designers as part of Modenus‘ Blog Tour Las Vegas to visit KBIS. I have a portfolio up on the Modenus site.

A kitchen and bath show? Why would a landscape designer want to go there? As the lines blur further between inside and outside, it’s important for me as a designer to know what’s out there–what the trends are and what new materials are available–not just for outside. My clients expect the same level of performance and design outside as they do in. I design outdoor living spaces that include kitchens and sometimes showers. It makes sense to go. Additionally, the lines have blurred to such an extent that I will be speaking on a Voices of the Industry panel about Outdoor Kitchens. You can follow along with the hashtag #KBISOutdoorLiving. I’ll also be using two other hashtags #designhounds and #BlogTourKBIS if you want to discover the same things that I do.

In the suburban New York/New Jersey gardens where I do much of my landscape design work, fences are a part of the landscape. They become, by virtue of the height and length, a major landscape feature–whether intended or not. Creating a planting scheme to complement them depends on the fence and the homeowner’s intent for their yard and the shade sun patterns created by the fence itself. The two examples below are stylistically different, but both are created in a very narrow space and require minimal care.

A hot, small space between a fence and a driveway can become a lush cottage garden that requires little water and simple maintenance. For this small project I wanted the formality of the fence to be softened by the relaxed planting style. The white fence is a major player in the design and a visual partner to bloom and foliage colors that are limited to yellow, blue and grey.

Fastigiate and dwarf varieties of plants are excellent choices for creating a layered interesting planting design in a narrow space. In the backyard below, the homeowner asked me for as much flat green space for three teenage boys to practice sports. Plants needed to be able to withstand errant balls and and occasional out of bounds play. The garden is less than four feet wide and is a straight line along the fence. It is layered to create four season interest and is composed of three plants: fastigiate hornbeams (Carpinis betulus ‘Fastigata), a diminutive weigela–Weigla florida ‘Midnight Wine’ for color and spring bloom, and upright, narrow boxwood Buxus sempervirens ‘Monrue’ (Green Tower boxwood). The maintenance consists of weeding and mulching when necessary and an annual prune for the boxwood.

Often my landscape design clients I ask me to insert some contemporary flavor into an existing landscape. These renovation projects are similar to interior updates in that the new has to dovetail seamlessly with the existing. This family had a very traditional, overgrown and poorly maintained landscape that had no place for three active, young girls to be outside except the driveway, an in need of repair pool, and a too small patio. The house sits on generous lot that is also promontory with a steep slope up to the front door and an even steeper slope back to the rear property line.

Most people would look at this and say ‘What’s wrong with that? It’s beautiful!”. On the surface it was, but on closer inspection there were many functional issues and I saw opportunities to open up sight lines, to create family and entertaining space as well as to make better transitions from one place to the next and technical options to correct erosion and drainage problems. I also saw a yard that when it was first designed, twenty-five years ago, had been well thought out–but was now way past its prime. The fireplace, for example, had been shored by someone up on the back end with 2 x 4’s where the footing had separated from the stone work. That was just a disaster just waiting to slide down the hill if not repaired or demolished. Boxwood hedges that defined several ‘rooms’ had been allowed to get too big and many had large dead sections or were riddled with fungus. Trees that had been smaller had now outgrown their sites, had dead wood, or were in two cases just dead. Every last bit of masonry had to be repaired…there were loose stones and steps throughout.

After our arborist completed recommended tree work and removals, the pool renovation came first. We repaired the coping, re-plastered in a new darker color, added crisp, blue glass subway style waterline tile, added two bluestone decks and a ribbon around the pool. We demolished the tumbled down pergola to gain some square footage and open up usable space. The very crooked fence was straightened out and the hillside above the now exposed stone wall was planted. New furniture was ordered that added to the contemporary feel of the space. An attempted water feature repair did not work on the old water wall so that will be the final piece added to the puzzle later this year.

I met several times with the clients and their children to discuss what to save and what to demolish as well as what their ‘dream’ yard would entail. The kids wanted a play space beyond the front yard swing. The adults wanted safe and usable pool space as well as a larger entertaining space. They also wanted a more contemporary feeling within the context of what was there.

An old dog run behind the garage that had a more gentle slope than the rest of the property was re-made into a children’s play area. The children hand painted curtains for their ‘stage’.

Extra fence from the pool area was used to enclose it on the lower side and the chainlink fence that had contained the dogs was removed. A simple balance beam was made from felled tree trunks, a playhouse/stage area with a new bright blue deck was built under the existing stairs and a slide added to the top. The remaining stockade fence was stained white to brighten up the shady area and a carnival silly mirror was added to it just for fun.

The final phases of the renovation ended up being the most problematic. Almost all of the existing bluestone had to be relaid since it was incorrectly installed the first time. Retaining walls had insufficient foundations and were failing and were replaced. The hillside below was stabilized and planted with native Carex to aid in soil retention. The fireplace was demolished and new walls were added to a reconfigured patio. The enlarged patio has a firepit and contemporary furnishings. The new seatwall has built in speakers and the steps to the pool have been widened as has the walkway to the adjacent courtyard. A garden now visually links the patio with the pool decks.

A courtyard was turfed over and the boxwood hedges and plantings in the front yard redesigned. A small, curved path at the driveway entrance was re-configured to allow for two chairs for adults who supervise the driveway bike and scooter riding.

Sections of hedge were removed from each side of the walkway to unify both sides of the front lawn. A scraggly pine was removed to allow what will be a beautiful Cornus kousa more light and room. Boxwood were replace with those from other areas and were pruned into clean lined shapes. Nepeta and daylillies were transplanted from the driveway to add seasonal interest. Plants were added to a side walk as well as to the driveway areas and new micro patio.

The best thing is that every time I visit there are bikes, hula hoops, pool toys and chalk art everywhere. What was once a problem space has become one that is loved and used. I can’t ask for a better result!

For me, it’s the end of container season. I only plant them for a few clients. Planter design is not a core service of my landscape design practice because I find them to take as much time to prepare for and execute as any other planting design. In reality, that’s what a container is, a planting design executed in a very small, seasonal space. I do have clients who specifically ask me to design their containers and I say yes, but I just don’t overtly offer to do it.

Nobody ever taught me the rules of containers so I approach them in the same way I would any design. I lean towards structure planted with abandon in my garden design and my container plantings reflect that for the most part. Since the space and number of plants I can use is so limited, I am a ruthless editor. I don’t personally love planters filled with lots of different kinds of plants. I think it makes a stronger visual statement to limit them in the same way I would any other design. The container above has four varieties in it, the one below three. In a really big planter I may use as many as five, repeated throughout the design.

My approach is the same as for any design–first decide on the primary structure and then build down from there. In a garden that may be a tree, a pergola, or a sculpture, in a pot, it’s the same–there has to be something anchoring it all.

When I shop for container plants, I shop for all of them at once, collecting special plants from a wide variety of sources. The process takes several days. If a specific request was made, such as the variegated willow standards in the pots above I will seek them out. Each season I limit the color palette which aids in later editing. This year my palette included chartreuse, deep green, salmon/apricot, white/grey and a very saturated purple.

Most of the time I use the client’s own containers, but over the past few years I’ve been specifying them in larger designs so I know they will work within the context of the larger landscape that I have designed. Planters to scale and the right style for the larger context are details that make or break a project.

Sometimes my mind connects the dots in unexpected ways. I visited ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair) in New York over the weekend. You would think I’d be all mid-mod and forward thinking. But no.

I fell for these concrete tiles from Grow House Grow. They are a new product for the company, frost proof and come a a wide variety of colors.

My mind immediately went to the Middle Ages and the floor at Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Since my images of that were lost in an iPhone debacle, I borrowed this one from Wikimedia to illustrate the point.

As part of my job as a landscape designer, I regularly walk the growers and nurseries to see what is new and what looks good. I learn about plants new to me that I may want to trial and try. Like many other designers, I get on a plant jag and have a love affair with a group of plants for a while and then move on to flirt with something else that catches my rather short plant attention span. Today I have plant lust. I was at the fabulous NJ wholesale grower, Pleasant Run Nursery yesterday and fell for Magnolia x brooklynensis ‘Black Beauty’ that is just now in bud.

I didn’t buy it because I didn’t know it. I came back to the studio after laying out some plants on a project, poured a glass of wine, and had a ‘first date’ to find out more.

Blooming later than the masses of M. soulangiana that are in my neighborhood, it reliably blooms after the late freeze that sometimes causes magnolias to loose their buds and hence their bloom. It’s dramatic and different. It is hardy to Zone 4 and is a small tree reaching 15-20 ft (most say smaller)–a perfect size for small gardens and suburban lots. There is nothing not to like!

I think I will have a long term relationship with this tree and it will be the first plant added to my home garden.

I’m not a landscape designer who has a wonderfully designed garden that is a terrific advertisement for my craft at my home. I should, I live on a corner, but as I’ve shared here before it’s mostly a neglected mess with good bones and a rotating cast of plants. My home garden is quirky and in a constant state of flux. Since my landscape design practice is design only, I don’t have a crew I can ‘borrow’ for the big tasks, so they wait and are ignored for as long as possible. I’m mostly not very motivated to work in my own garden after spending my days designing beautiful ones for others.

This spring I wanted to do a major switch out of some elements in the garden to enable me to try some new plants and design ideas. I grow plants to observe and trial that I want to try in my design work and I have limited space. That means every few years some have to go to make room for others.

Beyond my own neglectful gardening style, my garden is under siege. Deer, rabbits, feral cats, squirrels, chipmunks and voles and dogs who are allowed to pee on my plants are the culprits. The yard is unfenced and I don’t water regularly or provide much in the way of added nutrients beyond compost and good soil to start with. Usually the plants that I take out are victims of their own success. Over a period of time they have proven themselves to me as worthy. All have been in my garden a minimum of three full growing years which is my loose time frame to trial a plant.

Here are my anecdotal notes on some of the plants which survived and thrived and were removed yesterday to make room for others. There is also a plant that I was sorry to see gone…I wasn’t ready to wave goodbye to it just yet.

Amsonia hubrichtii– I grew this from a 4″ pot and it became a monster–the one remaining plant was almost 4′ across and 3′ high. It was never bothered by deer but it was also not a a plant I loved beyond the lovely light blue bloom in mid-spring. Mine never had the brilliant fall color–just a dull gold. The pests never bothered it.

Cornus alba ‘Elegantisima’–Grown from a big box cast off 1 gallon pot. I loved the variagated foliage and the red twigs in winter, but it was too big even when coppiced regularly. It is a vigorous grower and has a loose informal shape when left to its own devices. The pests left it alone completely. The image below was taken just after a freezing rain.

Vernonia noveboracensis–I like really tall perennials and I love this plant in the wild. I’d rather have plants that don’t self seed everywhere in my garden since I don’t have time to edit them. The exception to that is Verbena bonariensis. As for the Veronia, I don’t have enough room for this garden giant that thrives on neglect! Over 6′ tall with violet blooms in late summer. I just got tired of it. No pest problems whatsoever.

Rhus typhina ‘Tiger Eyes’ and Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firetale’–These are paired together because I bought them as a pair. The thought was to have the pink Persecaria grow up through the yellow leaves of the Rhus. They did for one season. I over romanticized the Rhus, it is a rangy looking thug. It looks fantastic in a pot though. I can see why people fall for it and I would consider using it in a container. It spread on its root stock into the lawn and other areas of the garden. The Persecaria is supposed to be a thug…it’s a dud. It didn’t thrive on my neglect and lack of ample moisture. The good news is that neither were bothered by much of anything else. The critters left both alone.

The plant that bothered me to remove was a prized Styrax japonicus ‘Emerald Pagoda’. Two years ago when the 17 year cycle of cicadas had them chomping leaves and creating garden mayhem everywhere–except my town, my young Styrax was the only plant in my garden that was attacked. I decided to watch it and hope for the best. I didn’t get my wish and it sadly went to the compost heap yesterday.

So what is going to take the place of everything I removed? Plants I’ve never grown before…

My visit last week to one of the great American gardens, Filoli, in northern California, was a revelation in many ways. I have wanted to visit since I first saw pictures of it years ago. The garden was designed in the early 20th century by its original homeowners with a team of architects, artists, and horticulturists. There is no known master plan yet it has survived largely in tact which is a rarity for American estate gardens of this size and scope.

Sometimes my travels are guided by my desire to experience specific places firsthand. My trip to Marrakesh and Majorelle was one of those. Standing in a place, in real time and feeling the human factor and scale is important. At Filoli it is very important. As big as the garden is, it feels intimate. There is a succession of garden rooms unified through the use of specific plants as well as how they are used.

Thinking about what a design might have looked like in plan view and then ‘feeling’ it out on the ground makes me think about the power of great design. For me, a photograph can never replace the human experience. The intersection between the man made and the natural interests me as a landscape designer. Ultimately what I design are places for people. Filoli is definitely a garden for people.

In landscape design terms, I want to see what the designer(s) intended from my own 5’7″ viewpoint. Being in a place and noting how the site was honored or not, how I am directed to move through it by plants and paths, how I experience hidden, surprise and obvious views, by noting the themes and repetitive motifs, by seeing how the elements all hang together allows me to grow and stretch as a designer. These visits are my master classes, learning from others firsthand, yet through my own lens of experience.

Of the many gardens I’ve visited, none use the axial views better than Filoli. They are strong and thoughtful, directing views and embracing the surrounding California landscape. It is both very symmetrical and not at all.

Filoli as a designed space is overwhelmingly about rectangles–on the ground plane as well as on the vertical plane. There are very few curves…an arch here, a round fountain there or a boxwood ball. Even the famous cylindrical yew towers read as rectangles. Although traditional, it doesn’t feel dated or outmoded.

The rectangles are softened with exuberant plantings in calculated and calibrated color palettes. They are punctuated by clipped and trained plants. There are pollarded sycamores and espaliered fruit trees as well as a beech hedge and cascading varieties of wisteria. The hundreds of yews are the stars of the garden. The plants are used design elements at Filoli. They are equal players defining as well as decorating space.

I was happy to spend a day in great company, walking and talking in this remarkable garden. It exceeded my expectations and I felt as if I cheated our late out of the gate spring in New Jersey with a few days of bloom and sunshine on the California coast. Visit if you can.

Green is a thing. Right now it’s a missing thing. It’s what I miss most during winter and what makes me smile first in the spring–those small green shoots pushing up through frigid earth. I’ve been thinking about making flowerless gardens. Gardens that are mostly green. Gardens that rely on scale and texture and subtlety of hue and maybe some skilled pruning.

In New Jersey, where I practice landscape design, this may prove to be more difficult than it is in warmer climates where there are bolder choices and plants with immense architectural leaves. Many of the images here are from gardens I’ve visited in the south–Miami, Dallas, and New Orleans. All are interesting to me and there are no flowers in them.

Whatever broad bold foliage we have here the deer seem to love …like hostas, so I’ll find a substitute of some sort. Broad strappy foliage is easier to find–grasses have that in abundance. Subtle transitions of green along with texture will create the primary interest beyond shape.

Scale and shape and texture become much more important when color is limited. Finding companions that work with each other and can stand visually on their own and help define space is challenging with flowers–without it’s crucial.

Finely textured plants can disappear with out something with muscle to play off of. There can still be drama, but it’s more mellow (pun intended). These gardens don’t have to be formal and clipped, they can be loose and natural or somewhere in between.

Creating a planting plan that will be interesting in four seasons yet not be totally without seasonal specific floral interest will be a challenge–most of the plants I love anyway have super cool foliage and interesting bloom. Choosing plants for foliage and texture is usually where I start a planting design, after the permanent structure of the garden has been figured out. Bloom, however beautiful is secondary and fleeting.

So for now, while the land is frozen in white and snowy limbo, I’ll just have some green dreams and wait for opportunities to reveal themselves in the upcoming spring landscape design projects.

Last fall, I entered a garden I designed in New Jersey in 2015 APLD International Landscape Design Awards in the Planting Design category. It was awarded the highest honor, a Gold Award. To be honest, I knew the value of the design, but since it is the antithesis of current planting trends, I was really pleased. Current trends in planting design seem to require ornamental grasses and meadow-like qualities. This garden has neither, but that doesn’t make it unsustainable or unfriendly to all but deer.

The garden’s underlying structure of boxwood hedging and pyramids gives it definition. My client specifically asked that I not use any ornamental grasses as they felt they were too ‘beachy’ looking. The 7800 square foot garden was originally built in the 1920s when the 15 acre property had a working greenhouse and two full-time gardeners. The bones of that garden remained: stonework in disrepair, heaved brick walks, and a leaky concrete pond.

The homeowners wanted to re-imagine the space in the spirit of the original, but with lower maintenance and an eye towards family use and deer resistance. A new stone wall was built to create a level terrace on the west slope with new gravel paths and existing brick walks that were excavated and re-laid linking to existing steps.

Planting beds were edged with recycled steel and damaged stonework was repaired. Millstones from throughout the property were inserted into the relaid brick paths to indicate transitions. The homeowner repaired the pond with salvaged parts; inexpensive off the shelf, steel arbors were added to support climbing roses; and drip irrigation installed.

Planting plans from the 1940s were available and indicated that the original garden had a color palette of deep blues and pinks punctuated with seasonal yellow and white accents. They were the inspiration for the new seasonal bloom sequence that starts out predominantly blue, white and pink; changes to white, yellow and pink; and back to blue, white, and pink. The historic property had been documented as General Lafayette’s winter headquarters at some point during the Revolution. Boxwood hedges and repeating pyramids are a nod to formal 18th century French gardens. That they are also deer resistant and provide winter interest was also considered. An organic maintenance plan was put in place–the evidence of this is the seeded areas between the natural bluestone slabs which as long as they are ‘green’ are mowed and left to their own devices.

The finished garden is lush and sensual with abundant bloom and textural interest. It is a traditional garden that was never meant to be ‘naturalistic’, but it was, and is meant to be of its time and place and I’m very grateful that it has received an award as acknowledgement that it’s okay not to follow the trends.

I’m not an architecture critic. I am someone who loves great architecture both contemporary and historic. In my work as a landscape designer part of my focus is to create landscapes and gardens that surround the attendant architecture in such a way that the design partnership between them is timeless and seamless. As a designer this may seem counter intuitive, but I believe that the best design has a sense of place and that my hand in that should be less, rather than more, visible.

Last week I visited Frank Gehry’s new building for the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. It is a tour de force of glass and structure.

It stands alone in the Bois de Boulogne. Its sail-like architectural exoskelleton is remarkable, but it is a single design statement that has little or no relationship to its surroundings. I have seen his buildings and structures in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and now Paris, and in each and every case they dominate rather than caress.

In an urban environment with competing architectural statements like the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles or the IAC building viewed from the High Line in New York (both below), this isn’t so obvious. But in the Parisien forest park, the building is very beautiful, but it is not of the place it’s in and that bothers me.

I admire the imagination and innovation in Gehry’s work. The buildings themselves are structures of great beauty. I enjoy the intellectual challenges that his architecture presents me with, but what I now don’t like is how they don’t sit on the land with ease. Even through the viewing prism of Lurie Park in Chicago the Pritzker Pavillion sits above it, alone and lofty as a single statement.

I believe it is our responsibility as designers and architects to embrace and celebrate our surroundings, and so, while I admire Gehry’s vision and virtuosity, as well as the power his buildings have to draw admiring crowds and challenge the status quo I wish they would also honor the land they are on.

Next week I’m travelling again. This time on a search for garden antiques and vintage in the markets in Paris and parts of Belgium. I am continuing on to Rome for a few days of play after that. For the first time in many, many years, I won’t be taking my laptop with me. I’ve traded the bulk and weight for my camera stuff and a tablet, so please follow my Instagram account for what I see and off the cuff inspiration.

I’ve also been waiting a while to post about a visit to Vizcaya when I was in Miami in November so here it is. I was enchanted. For a landscape designer, like me, who finds inspiration in classicism and order, this garden was sublime. Inspired by Venice, yet built in the tropics, it transcended my expectations–which were high to begin with. We arrived in the rain which magically stopped when I went out to the garden.

Lush and green, in November, Vizcaya was largely flowerless which did not detract from its interest. Layers of texture, geometric forms and varied stone and stucco create the depth.

Interesting uses of repeated geometric shapes–circles, triangles and rectangles on both the horizontal and vertical planes create cohesion and draw the eye through the garden. A single pop of color creates a focal point. Great editing is what makes great design, not piling up detail upon detail just to have them.

The same view from a few steps over takes the asymmetric organization of the previous view to one of almost perfect symmetry.

Celebrating Italian gardens and Floridian materials using coral stone, native limestone and juxtaposing them with Italian terra cotta and antique statuary and urns.

I’ve often thought that any garden style can be interpreted within the context of a specific region or plant group. A formal planting in the secret garden using cactus, grasses and agaves for structure and interest.

Last but not least was the summer house with views of the Grand Canal–a conceit if there ever was one complete with gondola moorings. This structure has been damaged during the Florida hurricane season and needs repair, but still had incredibly beautiful mosaic floor and lattice work.

There was much more to see, and if getting away from the cold dreary winter is on your list…Vizcaya fits the bill perfectly.

When I become this inconsistent, something is going on. What has it been? Life and work. Yes, Miss R has been part of that mix, but 2014 has been an odd year. It’s been an awakening of sorts. I love to write, but there are things that are more important to me than that. I’ve rediscovered my three happiest places –at the drawing board, indulging my gypsy feet, and my newest obsession, photography.

I made a yearlong commitment to be the President of APLD and I wrote some interesting (I hope) stories for Garden Design magazine. I organized a European Objects and Oranments tour for designers that will happen the end of January. I fulfilled a twenty year long dream of going to Morocco and along the way something had to give and Miss R was it. Here’s a rear view mirror of the year…in pictures of course!

January – In Nebraska

January – In Paris

February – Majorelle!

February – In Marakesh

February – In Versailles

March – In the New York Times!

April – In Washington, DC

August – In Chicago

November – In Miami Beach

I suspect 2015 will be just as sporadic for Miss R as I’ve already made commitments for more travel to wander and to speak at various events (roughly in order)–to Paris, Brussels and Rome; to Detroit and San Francisco; to Toronto, Baltimore and Chicago; and finally back to Washington, DC. Phew! If you are in any of those places and want to try and meet up, email me and I’ll do my best! In the meantime, Happy New Year to you and yours!

It’s no secret that I’ve been exploring Art Deco forms as inspiration for garden designs. I’ve always been drawn to the geometry and order, even when I started my career as a jewelry designer. Many of the preeminent decorative styles of the early 20th century have this type of order – Bauhaus, DeStijl, Viennese Secessionist (Josef Hoffman’s work is another swoon), Art Moderne and Art Deco and they still draw me in. When the opportunity to visit Miami Beach after the APLD Landscape Design Conference in Orlando last week I jumped at the chance. There was much more than this going on, including visits to several Raymond Jungle’s projects and Vizcaya, which I’ll write about in the coming weeks, but oh, those buildings in Miami brought me joy.

Each morning, before my companions were up I set out at dawn to take pictures–many of the buildings are on the beach and face east–I wanted the morning light. Here are just a few of hundreds of these gems. I think about taking the graphic quality of these facades, laying them down flat and using them in plan view as a starting point for planting beds and paths–I don’t think literally.

I hadn’t visited Skylands for about ten years, and never in the fall. I went hoping to see the last of the fall foliage and instead found stonework that was interesting in its scope and full of ideas.

Formerly an estate developed in the 1920s, it is now the New Jersey Botanical Garden and its stone American Tudor mansion is better known than the gardens as a popular site for weddings.

The stonework at Skylands is incredible and impressive…even if much of it is in need of repair. There is both formal and rustic stonework and sometimes dressed stone is juxtaposed with natural, dry stacked with mortared.

There were two stone features in particular that I loved and was inspired by. The first, a window box clearly displayed the hand and skill of the mason who made it. I’ve never seen one like this and would love to be able to duplicate it in some way.

The other was some bluestone flat work done to surround a planter. The stone radiates out from the central point of the circle, with angular cuts.

Skylands is a place that mostly stands still. A new crabapple allee that had been planned when I was last there has been planted, but the site still screams that it is underfunded and under appreciated.

I was one of seven (I counted) people there on a sunny afternoon, and one of them was mowing the lawn.

I had some rare time in between landscape design projects and clients last week and as I’ve been meaning to take my new camera lens out for a spin, I stopped by Frelinghuysen Arboretum in Morristown to search out some of the details of the season. The focus of this public park is plants…not necessarily design although it has its designer-y moments. I go here when I need a plant fix. I send my landscape design students here to photograph and learn about plants just as I did years ago when I was learning.

Grasses, asters, Japanese anemones and Monkshood were at their peak and the large swaths of hardwood foliage astound, but there are many other details that can make a landscape’s planting design special in the waning warmth and long low light of autumn. Sometimes they are stalwart summer hanger’s on and sometimes they are plants whose season is now.

I’m a sucker for contorted branches of a Japanese maple silhouetted against some foliage ‘stained glass’…

The gold and russet fronds of Dryopteriserythrosora (Autumn Fern) in a woodland setting adds some unexpected living color to the ground plane. Mostly the oranges of fall are fallen from above.

The late blooming native Nicotiana sylvestris (Woodland tobacco) is a giant in most gardens but so worth it in terms of drama. One of my personal favorites, and easily raised from seed, it takes forever for this plant to appear, and does smell a bit like an ashtray…remember those?

Pinus bungeana‘s (Lacebark Pine) exfoliating camo bark. Who wouldn’t want this in their garden? I don’t see this tree in commonly in the trade or used enough in gardens. In fact, I’ve only ever seen one once in a residential garden where I kept it from being cut down!

Lastly, as I said in the beginning the Aconitum and Anemones were at their peak. So pretty reaching for the light.

When I was in Chicago in August, speaking at IGC about landscape designers and their potential relationships with garden centers I took a day before and a day after to explore the city and meet up with friends. I’ve been to Chicago regularly over the past five years and have seen and written about its wonderful gardens and street plantings, but this time I went in search of something else. Architecture.

Chicago reinvented itself after the great fire in 1871, and many of architecture’s greatest design minds have lived or worked in the city. Three who formed the basis of the way we think about buildings now – Henry Richardson, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright experimented in Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

I was somewhat surprised to see that Sullivan’s Carson, Pirie, Scott building is now a Target, but given that company’s commitment to design it made sense.

I met up with landscape designer, Helen Weiss and her daughter, for an evening and went on an Art Deco walking tour. I was surprised to be thinking about how the interlocking and sleek geometry of that style could be re-interpreted as garden designs. Not literally–but as contemporary planting schemes or path layouts or even as ways to prune and hedge. I am sure something from this inspiration it will surface as I work through design ideas I’ve been experimenting with. It’s all a part of the process.

I visited gardens yesterday in Princeton, New Jersey. The tour was arranged by the New Jersey Landscape and Nursery Association (NJNLA) and featured four very different gardens by designer Bill Kucas.

What struck me about these outdoor spaces was that their details is what really made them interesting. In each space the features beyond plants were detailed beautifully, but when I asked about what made the spaces personal, that had been left up to the clients. In each space, with the exception of the one still being built, the choice of furniture and accessories beyond what the landscape designer had envisioned is what finished them and made them useful, wonderful places for people. Is a patio or deck really a place for people if there’s nowhere to sit or gather? Too often landscape designers stop at the plants and hard surfaces and leave the finishing touches up to the homeowner when the total vision should include all of the accouterments. Our interior design peers would never leave a space unfurnished! None of this in anyway detracted from the day…even the predicted rain held off until we were leaving the very last one.

By far, my favorite detail of the day was a balcony with thin brick or roofing tiles set on edge. It was finished with a rectangular copper gutter above and containing Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata).

Additionally, there were other beautiful masonry details in each garden. The pier below was unusual in that it combined stone, wood and concrete – each as its own detail but unified in the end product.

There were multiple seating areas in each space. Each had furnishings and accessories appropriate to the design and surrounding architecture. There was contemporary furniture from Design within Reach and vintage Smith and Hawken at one site; Restoration Hardware dominated another; a third had a collection of antique and vintage pieces. All of these ‘additions’ helped define the personality of the space and were lost opportunities for the designer to ‘finish’ the project through space and or furniture planning. It’s true, sometimes clients want to do it themselves, but often they want to collaborate and don’t have access to the ‘To the Trade’ options that designers can provide.

Now it’s back to work creating gardens and landscapes instead of being a ‘tourist’ in my own state on a busman’s holiday!

Miss R has been in the backseat all summer. Pretend you are on a roadtrip and listening to a story on the radio…the pictures will come after we reach our destination.

In a twist of weather related events and wonder, my landscape design business and my commitment to being the national President of APLD has taken all of my time, leaving little extra for regular blog posts. Although I feel a nagging sense of ‘it’s been too long’, I’m happy to have my priorities straight and to be able to see my garden and landscape design work come alive. I always feel that the work I do has the power to create profound changes in people’s lives so I put that work before all else.

As a designer I’ve always worked in series, exploring ideas until I feel they’ve come to some kind of satisfactory conclusion for me intellectually. The thing is though, is that I’m not always aware that a series is developing. I experiment with ideas and some prove to be fleeting, while others stick around for further clarification. So on to part two of the backseat story.

I had planned a blog post based on some images I had been collecting on my iPhone when POOF! all were lost in a technological glitch. No, I didn’t back up regularly then, I do now. So in going through what’s left via downloads from Instagram and Facebook, I noticed a thread of thought that’s been percolating into a full fledged idea. It’s one I want to explore more fully when the opportunities present themselves. Not all ideas work for all solutions.

I extol my students with the made up commandment ‘Thou shall curve with purpose and grace, thou shall not wiggle all over the place” when explaining how best to design using arcs and curves. I tend to design with a hard straight edge and soften that with abundant plantings marrying the geometry with the natural. It works on suburban lots of limited size and is simpler to maintain than lots of curved edges which become obscured overtime. I didn’t realize I was having a love affair with curves until I started looking back through my images this year. Here is the progression…

The Orangerie at Versailles in January while I was there just charmed me with its curved geometry and ease of maintenance–other than the topiaries just mow the lawn and cut back the hedge.

Then I was in New York and this long shadow caught my eye.

While shopping for plants for clients in a green house I whooped with excitement when I found a whole bunch of escargot begonias.

That lead to the design for a showhouse garden…

and completed…

And still yet a project that is currently being built distills those curves into a much simpler form.

These are ideas I want to explore further and evolve. I guess with all of my time dedicated to straight lines that I really I don’t have any trouble with the curve. I just a bit of trouble finding time to post!

It might seem counterintuitive to add more green to a garden, but lately to my landscape designer’s eyes, green looks like it should, fresh and new. (Go ahead, groan at that word use!) Two years ago, a version of green was the color of the year, but it was largely ignored by outdoor designers–perhaps we think we have the corner on green with our plant palettes.

The summer issue of The Designer, APLD’s quarterly design magazine is out. In the editorial is a piece I wrote about my trip to Morocco last winter and how the patterned surfaces found everywhere there have continued to influence my landscape design work.

What isn’t included there are some of the detail images of that still come to mind when I start to design a garden or, specifically a planting plan, so I decided to share them here. I take dozens of detail images for future reference where ever I go, but seldom share them. They’re my reference material and often don’t make much sense to anyone else out of context–these do I think.

When it folded two years ago, I lamented the demise of Garden Design magazine. In that piece, I also made a wish of sorts — If we, as a design discipline and community, want to be taken seriously, then we need to support publications at all levels of the marketplace, not just those that cater to the weekend warriors who relegate us to the DIY sector. Landscape design and landscape architecture are serious, complex disciplines that can inspire within and without.

Well, Garden Design is back in a new version, as a quarterly book-a-zine. In the interest of full disclosure, I have been working with them behind the scenes as an advisor and contributing editor since the new publisher bought the title and all of its archives. I felt that if I was going to wish for it, I had better be a part of the change I believe in. It might seem odd to write a review of something that I’ve had a hand in making, but that’s what designers do..view things with a hyper critical eye to how to make those things even better.

Although it’s not perfect, Garden Design does live up to its title and celebrates American landscape and garden design in a way no other publication on this side of the Atlantic even attempts. Overall, the first issue is a wow. It has a new cover design, a larger size and is bound like a book. With 132 ad free pages, I can’t argue with the content, it’s rich and varied and there’s plenty to read and look at. It is wide ranging geographically and many of the images are drop dead gorgeous. Inspiration for all types of gardens and outdoor spaces are included and there is a fantastic regional section at the back of the book. Best of all, it focuses on design as an entity that is important to the ultimate success of any outdoor environment.

As it evolves, the magazine’s editorial voice and art direction needs to be clearer. The details it presents both in photo editing and typographic/layout design need to be tighter and much more consistent. It also needs to focus on the flow of stories from one to another. The desire to show everything needs to be tempered by a clear and sharp editorial knife that supports the publication’s ‘voice’. I learned these lessons first hand (and the hard way) working on other publications. Sometimes, less is more, sometimes not. The trick in editing and laying out a magazine is to make sure that every little bit ads to the reader’s new found or rediscovery of the content and that each story stands on its own yet leads logically to the next. Consistency in design is as true in magazines as it is in gardens. Knowing what to leave out is as important as what is included – sometimes more so.

So with all of that said, the revitalized and revived Garden Design is worth the cover price and needs the support of American design enthusiasts and I’m certain that it will only get better from the high bar it already set for itself over time. When that happens will I will have gotten exactly what I wished for.

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About The Author

Susan Cohan, APLD is the principal of Susan Cohan Gardens, a boutique design studio which specializes in residential landscape design. She is an award winning, nationally certified landscape designer and is well-known in the landscape and design communities for her design work and for her writing about design.

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